MY YOUTH

I was born August 14, 1851. I was baptized John Henry Holliday after my uncle John Stiles Holliday, who delivered me, and my father, Henry Burroughs Holliday, on March 21, 1852 at the First Presbyterian Church in Griffin, Georgia. Uncle John's wife, Aunt Permelia, and Mother were very close. She was there to give strength and help when Mother went through her pregnancy and then coped with my birth defects, a most trying time.

I was born with a cleft palate so was not the perfect child my parents had envisioned. I was a crushing disappointment to them. As an infant, I was very hard to feed, and many infants doubtless died from aspiration pneumonia — a condition associated with cleft palate in which milk gets down into their lungs. My loving mother's patience and love made her excel as my caregiver and mother.

Cleft palate caused shame in many parents. Some feel it is their fault or blame it on the other parent. Far too often, the father leaves the mother and child. My father threw himself into business and away from me, his own child. He showed his Mexican son, whom he'd adopted during the war with Mexico, far more love. He was embarrassed by my looks and the abnormal sounds I made. My adopted brother, Hidalgo, seemed to readily accept me as a brother and care for me, though Father allowed us little time together as he kept Hidalgo close to him in all his business dealings.

Such an afflicted child makes funny noises due to the cleft palate, and few understand any words he struggles with. Far too often, he is dismissed as an idiot, a further source of pain to his parents.

My uncle, John S. Holliday, is the one who diagnosed me with cleft palate. Later, a specialist named Dr. Long, who had great experience with the use of ether as anesthesia and was highly recommended by my aunt Permelia, corrected my cleft palate when I was eight weeks old. Aunt Permelia, Uncle John's wife, was a fun-loving Episcopalian and a ray of sunshine. And Mother was a kind, soft-spoken, devoted Methodist, then Presbyterian. Both were strong Christian women and close to each other and to God.

As I grew older, I could sense my father's shame as he withdrew into business and away from Mother and me. I came to adore my mother, Alice Jane McKey, who was ever so kind and patient with me. Very soon after my birth, she came to see me as her child, the child she cherished. So, as with most mothers, she loved me unconditionally.

Father, like most men of the time, believed in taking a stern hand, an iron hand, with a son. We had few suppers by the time I was five when he did not shame me. He would say, "And what did you learn today, John Henry?" When I replied, he would say, "What? I can't understand you." After I tried again, he would say, "Alice Jane, the child cannot talk. He mumbles and squeaks like an idiot." So much for that evening meal, which was the only time I saw him.

Mother shielded me from my father's shaming and heavy-handedness and offered me her soft hand and embrace. She forbade anyone to make fun of me.

I am told it took an hour and a half to feed me before my palate was repaired, and I awoke every two hours hungry again. This must have exhausted Mother. She and Aunt Permelia became very close through my mother's efforts to feed me.

At one point, Aunt Permelia and Mother thought it good to have a picture of my cousin Robert and me taken, as we looked so much alike. So my cousin Robert Alexander Holliday and I were captured in a picture. As years passed, we became more like brothers than cousins, as Robert's brother, George, was much older than him.

During the war with Mexico, my father, Henry Burroughs Holliday, served his country and brought home an orphaned Mexican boy named Francisco Hidalgo. My father was at that time a bachelor, and this perhaps reflects a compassionate nature that my father seldom revealed to anyone. He married my mother approximately eighteen months later. Francisco was like a brother to me and accompanied my uncles to the battlefield when the War between the States broke out.

It seemed odd that Father had adopted an orphan and accepted him as a son while he withdrew from me, his true son, due to my birth defect. He could not deny the shame of fathering a deformed child who needed help to speak clearly.

Mother made picture books and worked with me each day to improve my enunciation. She also gave me her tremendous love of music, especially the classics, including Beethoven. She taught me how to play piano. She, of all people, treated me like a man and her defender, and she gave me confidence.

At twelve, I was smaller than most boys my age. I was picked on because of my size but was told it was better to come home lying on a shield than to not fight as a knight. Soon, not only was I being treated better by the bigger boys, but they also began to copy my test answers.

Mother made me practice the piano with pennies on my fingers so I would strike the keys more cleanly. I learned how to play trills and turns for hours.

By thirteen, I had shot up in size. Playing the piano and other exercises made my fingers and hands flexible and my forearms strong, preparing me for the future.

For a while, rumors of the War between the States filled every household, causing many of us to worry and react with anger. It seemed that at every gathering with family members, the subject of secession and war was discussed. Few wanted either, but they also refused to give up their state's rights.

It was an uncertain time, and many were quite unsettled by such talk.

In April 1861, my father, who had been in politics and was a very successful land speculator; Francisco; and six uncles all rode away to serve in the Confederacy.

My extended family and I were subjected to the War between the States, loss of possessions due to the same, and occupation by troops, plus the plague of carpetbaggers. Those men used political influence to do whatever they wanted regardless of morals or law, taking advantage of blacks' inability to read or write.

The War Between the States was actually about states' rights — the rights of the Southern states to use slaves to help in their agriculture and to fight what they believed to be an unfair portion of taxes. The North was content to tax them more and to tell them to release all slaves immediately. Lincoln wanted all slaves freed and shipped back to Africa. I liked the view of Robert E. Lee, a Union colonel with a pro-secession family, which forced him to resign from the Union Army and turn...